or, The Hitchhiker's Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk

Reference Question of the Week – 7/13/14

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About this blog

By Brian Herzog

Hiya. My name is Brian Herzog and I am, among other things, a reference librarian at the Chelmsford Public Library in Chelmsford, MA*, and have been since 2005. I like being a librarian. I've also worked at the Scarborough Public Library in
...

Hiya. My name is Brian Herzog and I am, among other things, a reference librarian at the Chelmsford Public Library in Chelmsford, MA*, and have been since 2005. I like being a librarian. I've also worked at the Scarborough Public Library in Scarborough, Maine, and the Kent State University Library, in Kent, Ohio, which is where I earned my Masters in Library and Information Science. In addition to information science, I also enjoy reading, hiking, kayaking, knitting, biking, traveling, asking my friend Chris to do things for me, and popcorn. I do not enjoy trying new foods, reality television, drama, cell phones, ceremonies, or traffic.
*Swiss Army Librarian is not endorsed by the Chelmsford Library or the Town of Chelmsford. I speak for myself, of my own experiences.

Here's something that was entirely new to me - I didn't have a very good answer at the time, and, really, I still don't.

A patron called with this complaint:

I checked out two DVDs from other libraries, and am having trouble with them. I only have a laptop at home for watching movies - no television with a regular DVD player - and these two DVDs won't play in it. Other library DVDs I've gotten in the past have worked okay, but I noticed these two are purple. Why won't they play?

Uh... I had no idea. I thought purple DVDs could mean either just purple-colored plastic as some marketing gimmick, or, a colored data side could mean a DVD-R. I asked her to verify that these were real library DVDs, with the library's stickers and everything else on them (as opposed to a copy someone just burned and kept the original for themselves [which happens]), and sure enough, they did.

So they were real DVDs that some library purchased, yet they wouldn't play in her laptop.

I did some quick web searching, and found that other people do indeed have trouble playing purple DVDs. Mostly it's people withPlayStations (for which some guy has a tape-based solution).

Since I struck out there, I thought I'd look up these DVDs in the catalog to see if I could learn anything - and surprisingly, I did. One record had this note:

"This disc is compatible with all DVD players authorized in the U.S. and Canada"--Container.

So much for that. However, the record for the other DVD included this note:

"This disc is expected to play back in DVD video "play only" devices, and may not play back in other DVD devices, including recorders and PC drives"--Container.

Ehh... so it's another misguided DRM "feature." Now my best guess is that these DVDs are encoded to only work on play-only DVD players, whereas this patron's laptop's DVD drive was a read/write drive. I love that media studios treat everyone like potential criminals.

Anyway, I'd never noticed these purple DVDs, but I put one on request for myself to test it in various laptops I have. But some cataloger somewhere must have known these are limited-use DVDs, since not all of our patrons will be able to use them. My vote is to never buy these again.

Has anyone else encountered these? Am I right in thinking this is a "security" "feature?" Does anyone know of a way for my patron - who only has her laptop and no other DVD player - to watch these movies at home? Thanks.